While gangs sought favor with the poorest in Jamaica’s cities, he’d always cast his lot here, in the windward mountains and, to the west, in the leeward Cockpit country, places where Maroons had existed for four hundred years. And though each ran their community through colonels and elected councils, he liked to think of himself as their collective savior, protecting the Maroon way of life. In return, his compatriots provided men and women to staff his many ventures. True, prostitution, gambling, and pornography were covert interests, and they made him millions. But coffee was his passion. All around him, on the slopes for many kilometers, grew shrubs of modest height with glossy, dark green leaves. Every year, sweet-scented, white blossoms sprouted and eventually matured into bright red berries. Once ground and boiled they produced what many said was the finest drink in the world.
Blue Mountain Coffee.
His ancestors had worked the plantations as slaves. He now owned one of the largest and paid their descendants as employees. He also controlled the main distribution network for all of the remaining growers. His father wisely conceived that opportunity, after a devastating hurricane in the 1950s wiped out nearly every grower. A national board was established, with membership limited and criteria for quality, cultivation, and processing decreed. If not grown within sixteen kilometers of the central peak it was Jamaican Prime, not Blue Mountain Coffee. His father had been right—scarcity bred mystique. And through regulation of the product, Blue Mountain Coffee became valued around the world.
And made the Rowe family rich.
His man continued to dig.
Twenty minutes ago his other lieutenant had returned to the trucks to meet more of his men. They now arrived through the trees leading a blindfolded prisoner—late twenties, a mixture of Cuban and African—hands tied behind his back.
He motioned and the younger man was shoved to his knees and the blindfold yanked off.
He squatted close as the man blinked away the afternoon sun.
The man’s eyes went wide when he saw Bene.
“Yes, Felipe. It’s me. Did you think you could get away with it? I pay you to watch the Simon. And watch you do. Except you take his money, and then watch me, too.”
Fear shook the man’s head in violent nervous gestures.
“Listen to me, and listen real good, ’cause everything depends on it.”
He saw that his warning registered.
“I want to know what the Simon be doing. I want to know everything you’ve not told me.
This turncoat was of the streets, so patois would be his language.
He’d not heard from Simon in nearly two weeks, but he shouldn’t be surprised. Everything he’d learned had only confirmed what he’d long sensed.
Trouble.
The Austrian was enormously wealthy, a philanthropic man obviously interested in Israeli causes. But that did not concern Bene. He had no dog in the fight that was the Middle East. He was interested only in Columbus’ lost gold mine—as, supposedly, was Simon.
“I swear to you, Bene,” Felipe said. “I know nothin’. He tells me nothin’.”
He silenced him with a wave of his hand. “What you take me for? The Simon does not live here. He knows no one in Jamaica. I’m his partner. That’s what he says. Yet he hires you to work for him, too. Okay. I come to you and pay you to tell the Simon only what I want him to know and to tell me what he does. Yet you tell me nothin’.”
“He calls me up, pays me to do some things. I do them and he pays. That’s all, Bene. All.”
The words came fast.
“But I pay you to tell me
“He wants records. Papers from the archives.”
He motioned and one of his men handed him a pistol. He jammed its muzzle into the man’s chest and cocked the hammer. “I give you one more chance. What. Kind. Of. Things.”
Shock filled the prisoner’s eyes.
“Okay. Okay. Bene. I tell you. I tell you.”
He kept the gun firmly against the man’s chest.
“Deeds. He wants deeds. Old ones. I found one. Some Jew named Cohen bought land in 1671.”
That grabbed his attention. “Speak, man.”
“He bought land and all the riverfront property beside it.”
“The name.”
“Abraham Cohen.”
“Why is that so important to the Simon?”
“His brother. His brother was Moses Cohen Henriques.”
That name he knew. A 17th-century Jewish pirate. He captured a great Spanish silver fleet in Cuba, then led
